Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Mumbai, India, 1970 April 9 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that she has been trying to reach him by phone, unsuccessfully, for three hours; reflecting on how she is "always defeated over these small practical things, the world and I just don't get on" and that she admires Ismail Merchant and people like him because he seems to make the world "yield to them"; saying that she has had an idea about how to arrange the dialogue; considering how inspiration tends to strike her, "like a blow on the back of the head"; passing along a review from the New York Times about an unnamed book that she thinks he would find interesting; asserting that she thinks Saul Bellow's work (and the work of Jewish writers in general) wouldn't be his type and adding that Isaac Bashevis Singer might come closest but would still miss the mark; wondering if he has read anything by Peter Taylor; mentioning that she's finished a Tolstoy novel and is beginning one by Dickens; reflecting on the nature of writing and being a writer; adding that Ismail has answered the phone and taken the dialogue down; wondering whether she should even bother sending the letter; mentioning that Bob Hardgrave visited her and she was in a slightly aggravated mood.